From the Wall Street Journal:
"The truth is that war is nearly always a trial-and-error business in which bad decisions and failure tend to precede good ones--and victory.
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln hired, then cashiered, Generals Scott, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker and Meade before settling on Grant. That took about two years, during which the catastrophes of Bull Run (Union casualties: 2,896), Fredricksburg (13,353) and Chancellorsville (18,400) intervened. How's that for poor Presidential personnel choices leading to unnecessary loss of life?"
No doubt. But it is the success column that is rather shabby. That's the part you're supposed to look at.
This is, alas, another example of how the GOP brings out the worst of us, in word and deed. And don't forget how we slaughtered the Indians. Lynched the black people. And under Bush, carry those great "traditions" right into 21st century.
By the way, bad decisions and failure tends to preceed defeat. But damn me for the pessimist I am, eh?
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
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3 comments:
Civil War: The south shot first, they were traitors. We fought back.
Iraq War: Bush shot first. Ask questions later? Nah.
Two different wars. Two VERY different presidents. Don't compare apples with cow pies.
Wow, that's a simplication.
The south was faced with financial anihilation as they saw it: their actions were, in that sense, appropriate.
The world had been fed a notion of a dangerous Saddam (we are also fed that crap about Fidel Castro) so the world believed it. Using military force against Iraq was therefore appropriate. But WHAT was done and how it was done and how the people were treated, that was criminal. It would be sort of like knowing some virus was about to this the country, and being totally unprepared, that sort of thing, but on a grand great scale.
Or like strip mining where you rip the top off the moutain, take the coal, and leave nature to "heal" the damage.
Or you take your garbage and you dump it way way over there, far away from you, and let these free people deal with it, I mean, hell, there IS money in garbage, it's and opportunity!
We so NOT have a press that will attempt to fairly present another country's side of the issue: how can Americans, so informed, have even a prayer of making a fairly informed judgment.
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/004269.html
"As American soldiers massed on the Iraqi border in March and diplomats argued about war, an influential adviser to the Pentagon received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman: Saddam Hussein wanted to make a deal.
Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct an independent search. The businessman said in an interview that the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point, he said, the Iraqis pledged to hold elections."
Another case of poor reading by yours truly. Shit.
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